


arrivals and departures

by brella



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Adulthood, Angst with a Happy Ending, Future Fic, Getting Together, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-24 06:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17699588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: Tadashi remembers the last message he’d sent Tsukishima, five years ago, the one that had received no reply. 12:32 AM.I really miss you.Yamaguchi and Tsukishima fall out of touch. And then they fall back in.





	arrivals and departures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ravyn_ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravyn_ashling/gifts).



> Happy Chocolate Box, ravyn_ashling! I did some digging and saw that you wanted more fic of the HQ characters as adults, so I decided to give it a try. High five for Karasuno first-years and Tsukkiyama! 
> 
> I hope you like it! (: Oh, and here's some [music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLcYCviktXY)!

_Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else._  
_I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon._

— Richard Siken, "Detail of the Woods"

 

* * *

 

 

Tadashi hears about the party from Yachi.

“It’s for Kageyama-kun’s birthday,” she says. “Shouyou’s been planning it for months!”

(Tadashi wonders to himself what it must be like for Hinata to plan things. He has to push a caustic remark in a familiar but unwelcome voice from his mind.)

“When?” he asks. He and Yachi are getting lunch at their favorite place, a cheap sushi bar about halfway between her office building and the high school. “Wait, _where_?”

Yachi frets over her tuna roll. The harsh winter sunlight glinting off of the skyscrapers outside sends scattered white refractions through her hair. She’s worn it pixie-short like this for a while now, with a cute navy star barrette clipping her growing bangs neatly aside, and her blouse has a ruffle on it.

“This weekend,” she says. “And back home, actually! It’ll be Kageyama’s last break before the Summer Olympics, so… Hinata set it up at that restaurant, you know, by the school—”

“Ah,” Tadashi says. He knows exactly the one. “Want to take the train together?”

Yachi lights up. “Mm! Sounds like fun!”

And it does; it really does—Tadashi may have his weekly video calls with Hinata, but he so rarely hears from Kageyama except for the occasional rigid-but-well-meaning _how are you Yamaguchi I am doing well_ _sincerely Kageyama Tobio_ email in 20 pt font. And he hasn’t been back to Miyagi since Golden Week a year ago. And he isn’t doing anything this weekend; he’s ahead on grading homework, and students and faculty alike are already slouching into winter break anyway.

 _Fun_ , he thinks, as if to remind himself of what it means; fun, fun, it’ll be fun. Except…

“Oh,” Yachi mumbles.

Tadashi looks up mid-chew. “Oh?”

A salaryman walks briskly by the window from outside, disrupting the shadows on Yachi’s face. She bites her lip, glances aside. 

“Oh,” she says again. “And, um, also… Tsukishima… is coming.”

 

* * *

 

“Tsukki.”

“Hm?”

“We won,” Tadashi says.

Tsukishima’s head is turned away, watching the night road through the bus window. Had it not been for his answer, Tadashi might have thought he was asleep. From the back seats, Tanaka and Nishinoya are snoring in unison. 

Tadashi’s whole body is sore, restless, tense with unspent energy, but it also kind of feels like he’s floating, and has ever since the referee had blown the whistle for the final match-winning point. He wonders what Tsukishima feels like. Happy, he hopes—he’s pretty sure.

“I’m glad you didn’t quit,” Tadashi says with a full, stupid grin, remembering the roar of his heart when Tsukishima had crossed the court in four long, perfect strides for a surprise broad and screamed in triumph when it had gotten in, in a way he hadn’t since he’d blocked Ushijima two years before. “Back then.”

Tadashi hears Tsukishima’s laugh rather than seeing it, a faint chuff of air. “You’re welcome.”

Tadashi’s chest is tight around the words he cannot say. He knows how they feel—he’s known that for years, years—but not how to assemble them. The passing freeway lights flit across Tsukishima’s shoulder and catch in the ends of his hair like an uncanny flame.

Tadashi tries again with, “You were super cool.”

Tsukishima makes that amused noise again, the one that always flips Tadashi’s stomach over on itself. A perfect 360.

“So were you,” Tsukishima says as one might say the sky is blue.

“Serve and block,” Tadashi recites, still grinning. He can’t help it. He’s been chronically unable to help it around Tsukishima, these days.  _You two_ , Ukai had said,  _are unstoppable_. 

It’s there that Tsukishima finally turns his head. There’s a purpling bruise along the curve of his jaw from where he’d landed on the court after a collision with Ohtani, their first-year middle blocker. His eyes look fiercer, and so much more golden. He gazes sleepily at Tadashi, settling back into his seat, knees knocking against the back of the one in front of him.

With his mouth curved softly, he says to Tadashi, “‘As long as I’m here, you’re invincible.’” And looks at him a moment longer.

Then he scoffs, but there’s no heat or derision in it, more a practiced bewilderment. “Or something like that. Right?”

Tadashi doesn’t even know how he manages to speak. There’s no cool way to reveal that he’ll remember those words in Tsukishima’s voice for the rest of his life.

He wants to say, _me too, me too, I’ll always be here, I’ll follow you anywhere_. He wants to say, _I’m not joking_. He wants to see Tsukishima’s expression change in the nighttime when he does. He wants to reach over their laps, over the sliver of space and heat between their legs, and hold his hand for the whole ride home. He wants to... 

He wants to—

“Tsukki, _shh_ , they’re right there,” he says, falling back on a stifled chortle.

Tsukishima looks as pleased as ever to have made him laugh. He sits up, craning his neck over the back of his seat.

“They’re asleep,” he says, “on each other.”

“Seriously?” Tadashi wants to fall asleep on Tsukishima. “Don’t wake them up, come on—”

“That would go against my survival instincts,” Tsukishima says, and turns back around. “Whatever’s left of them after playing volleyball with these animals for three years.”

Tadashi smiles at him, marveling. Three years Tsukishima’s given to them—to volleyball—to that simple, miraculous sport he had taught to Tadashi in his backyard because Tadashi was too scared to try baseball (because Tsukishima didn’t play baseball).

“I’m happy we got to play,” Tadashi says before he can suppress the sentiment. “Together.”

He wants to say, _I wish it would last forever_ —but he knows what Tsukishima would say to that.

Tsukishima’s eyes fall on his and stay there. Something inside of them is shifting, golden still, a waiting fault about to form a mountain range. It fills Tadashi with an aching, helpless hunger.

His palm tingles with that want again, to grip his callused hand with the crooked pinkie, to put everything crashing around inside of him into words he can’t regret, not tomorrow or the next day or even in ten years.

 _I’ll follow you anywhere_.

“Me, too,” Tsukishima says without looking away. It takes him a long, long time. He weighs the words with an impossible focus even as he’s saying them, as though still learning their edges. He says, quieter, “I’m happy... too.”

 

* * *

 

They graduate five months later, on a cloudy afternoon in March. Tadashi keeps his second button, spends too long in an empty classroom staring at its tiny shape in his open palm and thinking that maybe this is what the human heart looks like outside of a ribcage.

Tsukishima goes to the Youth Olympics with Kageyama that summer and then to Keio on delayed admission in the fall. Tadashi goes to Tokyo Gakugei, working at a bookstore full-time and taking classes in the evenings.

Tsukishima is an hour away by train. Tadashi is busy. 

It’s not that complicated: they text for a while until they don’t.

 

* * *

 

 _Tsukishima is coming_.

Those three words are the foundation on which Tadashi’s time is built for the rest of the week, like the tagline of some blockbuster kaiju movie. He thinks about them in the teacher’s lounge and while his students are taking the kanji quiz and on the commute home, watching the Christmas lights of Tokyo bleed by through the window.

He manages to stop thinking about it for a little while, but then he passes one of the huge ads of Kageyama on the side of a building and starts thinking about it all over again. Thanks a lot, Olympics. 

“You didn’t tell me,” he says to Hinata over LINE video on Friday night.

Hinata, to his credit, looks repentant. Tadashi can see a copy of the Kageyama ad, of an obviously smaller size, taped to the wall behind him. It’s been there for months, along with various other volleyball posters that may as well be considered vintage by now—Tadashi knows for a fact that the Aru-chan one on the closet door is a collectible.

“Sorry,” Hinata says, clapping his hands together in front of his face and raising them as if praying for mercy. “I figured Yacchan would.”

 _Yacchan sure did_ , Tadashi thinks sarcastically, but is still too nice to say out loud. The translation work had always been Tsukishima’s responsibility.

“You’re still going to come, right?” Hinata asks desperately. His hair has somehow gotten even more unruly since high school, a giant orange puff. He’s wearing a slightly large Japan Olympic team hoodie that Tadashi is fairly certain belongs to Kageyama. “Please come, Kageyama will kill us if you don’t—”

Tadashi’s brow furrows. He stops poking at the mushrooms in the pan and turns to his phone, which is propped up on the counter against a stack of books.

“Us?”

“U-Uh, me and Yacchan,” Hinata says with a nervous laugh. He raises his hands again, then peeks around them to crack an imploring smile at the webcam. “Sorry, really. Please come.”

Before he’s even really decided, Tadashi laughs and says, “I’ll come.”

Hinata’s whole demeanor changes. His face splits into a sunny grin that almost instantly melts away whatever’s left of Tadashi’s resentment.

“All right!” he caws, pumping his fists. “That means you and Yacchan can come together! And seriously, if Tsukishima is a jerk to you? Kageyama can beat him up. An Olympic athlete vs. an accountant. No contest.”

Tadashi muffles another laugh. “I can’t picture that at all.”

Talk turns to other subjects, then, and Tadashi is kind of thankful for it. Hinata wants to hear about his students, and Tadashi asks about how coaching is going and, with the customary measure of caution, what Kageyama is up to.

Hinata has been splitting his time as an Assistant Coach among the senior Ukai’s youth team, an intramural club at the community college, and pitching in from time to time at Karasuno and even Shiratorizawa. The money isn’t great, and never has been, but staying in their hometown has helped; rent is cheap and he’s still got the stamina to bike over mountains to get where he wants to go.

After graduating from Kandai, Kageyama had been scouted by Japan’s Olympic team almost immediately. His schedule had become an endless rotation of training, touring, matches, and then training and touring some more. It’s gotten even more crowded with the advent of this year’s summer Olympics, his second time competing on the international stage.

Hinata had ended up not choosing to play professionally. It was a decision that had nearly driven a permanent rift between him and Kageyama— Tadashi remembers, having been Hinata’s second crying contact after Yachi—but they’d built their bridge, in spite of everything.

Tadashi still isn’t really sure if they’re dating or not. Attempts to clarify it never get him anything more than clumsy misdirections. He figures they’re at an impasse.

He knows the feeling.

“Did you cut your hair again?” Hinata asks, pouting. “Laaaame. It looked cooler when you wore it long.”

Tadashi snorts, moves his phone and his plate over to the kotatsu. The clear morning had given way to a dense December snowfall. Outside his narrow window, the flakes are accumulating silently on the sill.

He switches on the lamp, burnishing the four walls in light. 

“You know they told me I had to,” he says. He remembers how furious Hinata had been, launching into a ten-minute rant about how backwards schools were these days, how stupid it was that they’d hold Tadashi’s job hostage over something as ridiculous as hair. “But yeah, I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”

At some point, Hinata had gotten up to make instant noodles, and now he’s cross-legged in his swivel chair with the styrofoam cup perched on one knee, slurping indelicately through the same pair of red plastic chopsticks he’s had since high school.

Tadashi considers something. He slowly chews his rice, then swallows it.

“Hinata?”

“Mm?” Hinata’s eyes flick up to the camera, but his mouth is still full of noodles.

Tadashi looks down, attention wandering to his half-eaten bowl of food. “Do you talk to him much?”

He doesn’t know what he’s searching for. A sign, maybe, that he has not been erased from the narrative—that, one hour away by train, Tsukishima still knows that he exists.  

Hinata doesn’t stall, doesn’t withhold anything. He just shrugs.

“Nope,” he says. “Like, never. Kageyama does, though, sometimes. And Yacchan.”

Tadashi wishes that jealousy doesn’t nick his heart, hearing that. So many parts of him have evolved, but not that one—the one that still wants Tsukishima all to itself, despite everything.

His little fifteenth-floor apartment suddenly feels smaller, narrower, chillier. He misses the countryside, the vast promise of open space: fields, roads, trees, sedge plains, the waiting mountains in the distance. There was always a place you could run away to, if you wanted. Running away in Tokyo just means catching a different train.

 

* * *

 

Tadashi’s mom is in Ueno for the weekend visiting her sister, so when the cab drops Tadashi off on the way to Yachi’s on Saturday afternoon, he opens the door into an empty house. It’s a familiar routine. She’d left the heater on. There’s a note on the table written tidily on her favorite stationery, the one with the giraffes on it.

 _There’s food in the fridge_.  _Please eat the rest of the wintermelon before Sunday or it will go bad. Wear your mittens if you go out. It’s going to be very cold at night. I’ll call you when I get to Auntie Yasuko’s. Welcome home._

Tadashi checks the fridge. Curry. He smiles softly into the glow of the light, then puts his coat and shoes back on.

It’s going to be useless to sit around the house waiting for six o’clock, and he can’t bug Yachi because she’d needed to stop at home to get ready and help her mom with some chores. There’s not really anywhere for him to go; the restaurant reservation isn’t for another two hours, Sugawara is out of town at a friend’s wedding, and Hinata’s probably still at the train station clinging to Kageyama.

He figures he’ll just go for a walk and look at the mountain, but when he passes the kitchen table he bumps into it, causing the note to flutter to the floor facedown. He crouches to pick it up and sees that there’s more writing on the back.

_Ah, and could you pick up some ponzu from the convenience store? I just ran out on Friday night and didn’t have the time to get more. Wear your mittens—I mean it!_

Tadashi sets the note back on the table. Errands, huh?

He can’t even remember where his mittens _are_ —but when he pokes his head into his old room, just to look, he finds that they’ve been laid out side by side on the desk, smelling of laundry soap and his mom’s perfume: lemon.

 

* * *

 

 _from: Hitoka  
_ _Heading out soon! Mom wanted me to help set up her new TV. It’s huge! So heavy!!!_

 

 _from: Hitoka  
__(;-_-)_ _ノ_

 

 _from: Hitoka  
_ _What are you up to?_

 

 _to: Hitoka  
_ _grocery shopping ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ_

 

 _from: Hitoka  
_ _Eh?! Really? Where?_

 

 _to: Hitoka  
_ _Sakanoshita_

 

About two seconds after he hits send, an incoming call from Yachi pops up. Weird. Tadashi thumbs the Ignore button, planning to text her again saying he can’t talk on the phone in the store, as he turns into the soy sauce aisle.

He looks up and yawns, eyes scanning the shelves. Kikkoman, shoyu, ponzu, Tsukishima.

Wait.

He’s dimly aware of his phone ringing again, buzzing away in his pocket. The sound earns an aside glance from Tsukishima—

And then a double-take.

Tadashi can’t move.

Tsukishima’s eyes are utterly wide. Golden, like a rice paddy in autumn, like baltic amber. His hair is shorter, trimmed close in a straight line at the neck. The frames of his glasses are wire now, steel gray. He’s wearing a beige overcoat and a black scarf. His nose and open mouth are pink from the cold—his sharper jaw is slack. He’s holding a bottle of ponzu.

Tadashi can see the slopes of his finger bones, delicate and smooth, through the skin of the hand gripping the bottle. His pinkie is still crooked. Tadashi tears his eyes away and forces them to Tsukishima’s face—

“Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima says, nothing more than a breath.

—and his stomach caves in.

His phone is still buzzing. He feels sick, overjoyed, humiliated, furious. He can’t move. He can’t move.

“Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima says again, stronger this time.

Tadashi remembers the last message he’d sent Tsukishima, five years ago, the one that had received no reply. 12:32 AM. _I really miss you_.

Tsukishima slowly puts the bottle back without looking at the shelf.

Tadashi remembers the last message he’d gotten from Tsukishima, five and a half years ago. 3:17 PM. _I’m doing fine_.

The space between them, only a few feet at most, feels cavernous. Tadashi isn’t sure he’d survive the crossing, isn’t sure his legs are strong enough to leap. 

The look in Tsukishima’s eyes is unbearable.

Tadashi’s body acts before his mind can. He loudly says, “Excuse me.” He bows.

And then he turns around and leaves.

 

* * *

 

“Please don’t go home,” Hinata implores him.

“I’m going home,” Tadashi retorts into the receiver. His panting breaths cloud in front of his face as he strides along the street back to his mom’s house. “This was stupid. This was a stupid idea. Sorry.”

“You’ll make Yacchan cry,” Hinata says gravely.

Tadashi slows his walking.

“You’ll make _Kageyama_ cry,” Hinata says.

In the background, Tadashi hears, “What?! No he won’t! Tell Yamaguchi he can do whatever he wants!”

“Wh—What the hell, Kageyama, that’s cold!”

“Huh? I-I didn’t mean it like _that_ —dumbass—”

A familiar smile wobbles its way onto Tadashi’s face before he can hold it back. He stops walking altogether, heart shivering behind his ribs, fingers cold from more than just the December chill.

Today is Kageyama’s birthday. He’s 24.

“Sorry,” Tadashi mumbles again, wiping his nose with one of his stupid orange mittens. “I didn’t mean to… I just… I’ll come.”

Hinata’s breath crackles in the speaker, relief and appreciation and a strange, mature note of understanding.

Kageyama says, a little muffled, “Good.”

“We’re heading over soon,” Hinata says, “so if you and Yacchan are meeting up, we should all—”

“Why did you run away?” Kageyama asks bluntly before Hinata can finish.

Tadashi’s heart twists to the point of tearing.

“What?” he chokes out. 

“Kageyama, you can’t just _ask_ —” Hinata starts to exclaim, aghast, but Kageyama plows on, closer to the receiver, “Aren’t you happy to see him?”

Tadashi bites his lip. He turns his head to look behind him, as if Tsukishima will be standing there, waiting for his answer. The street is empty, dusted in the remains of Friday’s snow.

If he went back a little and turned right, he’d end up at Tsukishima’s house. He wonders if the lilac tree is still there. He wonders if the basketball hoop is still—

“Deep down,” Kageyama adds, “I mean.”

He has the decency to sound self-conscious. Tadashi trawls for an answer and realizes that he doesn’t know.

Ever the terrible liar, he murmurs, “I don’t know.”

Even though he can’t see either of their faces, he has the impression that both Hinata and Kageyama want to say something, but are holding themselves back. (Years of friendship with Tsukishima had given him an ear for the unspoken, in their own way.) He’s not sure he wants to draw it out. 

“Oh,” Kageyama says. He’s mumbling the way that he always does when he’s embarrassed. “Okay.”

Then, in a voice that hasn’t really changed since he’d been apologizing for harshness on a volleyball court on a hot summer day, he appends to it, “My bad.”

“It’ll be fun, Yama,” Hinata promises. There’s that word again, _fun_. Tadashi suddenly finds that he hates it. “We’re glad you’re coming.”

“Yeah,” Kageyama grunts. It’s about as earnest as he gets with people who aren’t Hinata.

Tadashi is a little touched. “Thank you for inviting me,” he says, wiping his nose again.

“Duh!” Hinata exclaims. “Okay, we’re gonna put on our coats and leave. See you there?”

It kind of sounds like a threat. Tadashi laughs wetly into the receiver.

“Mm,” he says, and pulls in a sharp breath, letting the cold air shock his lungs into working again. “See you there!”

 

* * *

 

 _from: Hitoka  
_ _I TRIED TO TELL YOU I’M SORRY I’M SORRY PLEASE FORGIVE ME TADASHI-KUN PLEASE!!!!_

 

 _from: Hitoka  
__（_ _ｉ_ _Д_ _ｉ_ _）_ _I’M SORRY_

 

 _from: Hitoka  
_ _IS THIS TOO MANY MESSAGES THIS IS TOO MANY ISN’T IT I’M SORRY_

 

 _to: Hitoka  
_ _it’s ok!! i promise! meet you there?_

 

 _from: Hitoka  
__(_ _；_ _人_ _；_ _) Okay._

 

* * *

 

It turns out that Tadashi couldn’t have skipped out even if he wanted to, because Yachi had accidentally left her gift in his luggage. It’s a hat, he thinks; she’s taken up crochet in the past year or so, and she’d been interrogating Hinata about which warm and practical winter accessory Kageyama is in most urgent need of for several weeks.

He and Yachi converge on the restaurant, a classic family-style place where Ukai used to occasionally take them after away games, at pretty much the same time. Yachi is wearing a fluffy white sweater under her coat and gives Tadashi a wailing, apologetic hug.

Hinata and Kageyama show up together in matching hats. Tadashi gets a good laugh out of the fact that Kageyama’s haircut has not evolved since high school.

“They make it look way cooler on the ads,” Hinata says wisely as he leads the procession to the front door, and illustratively he combs his hair out with four fingers as if to make it look windswept, “but I don’t think he knows other haircuts exist.”

“I just like the haircut I like,” Kageyama barks.

This particular level of gruffness is wounded rather than annoyed. Tadashi is grateful that his Kageyama-To-Normal translation skills haven’t gotten too rusty. Yachi catches Tadashi’s eye over her shoulder and lets out a giggle. Tadashi grins mischievously back.

“Hah?” Hinata barks from the doorway. “Tsukishima? What the hell are you doing here _already_?”

“You think I’d trust the Idiot Duo to claim a reservation on time? Touching.”

“Ugh, you’re the worst! You’re still the worst!”

Tadashi almost has a complete out-of-body experience when he hears Tsukishima laugh. It sounds just the same as he remembers. Weightless and ephemeral. 

Tadashi knows right away what it’s revealing, although the others probably won’t: he’s actually happy to see Hinata and Kageyama.

Tadashi wants to crowd past Hinata and cross the room right then and there, watching Tsukishima laugh. He also wants to acquire super speed and sprint a continent or two in the other direction. He can see Tsukishima over Hinata’s shoulder; he’s sitting cross-legged on the right side of their reserved table in a pressed white shirt and nice slacks. His socks have whales on them.

Tsukishima catches Tadashi’s eye and stops laughing. The transition is seamless. He doesn’t say hello. 

After a transparently obvious litany of reasons why Kageyama needs to have the seat closest to the exit and Hinata needs to have the one closest to the bathroom and Yachi gets nervous sitting close to windows (there are no windows), Tadashi ends up sitting right next to Tsukishima. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt so stiff, or so _hot_ , or so like his heart has turned into a jumping frog.

Tsukishima smells nice. Not like anything in particular, or any kind of fancy cologne or anything—that’s not his style—just… like Tsukki. Like—soap.

Tadashi kind of wants to cry. 

 

* * *

 

 

It really is a fun party. Somehow Hinata had reserved the entire restaurant, just for them, so they can be as loud as they want. Tadashi decides early on that he isn’t going to spend the whole time being miserable; he’s here to see his friends and that’s what’s most important. Certainly not Tsukishima, sitting beside him, his stirring body heat filling the space between their shoulders.

Tadashi makes a point of not looking at him, not even turning his head in his direction. He laughs at Hinata’s jokes and teases Kageyama and joins Yachi in regaling them with crazy Tokyo commute stories. He laughs until he can’t breathe as Hinata recounts to them how Kageyama caught the wrong train coming over and almost ended up in Kansai by accident.

Tsukishima isn’t nearly as boisterous as they are, although that isn’t saying much after Hinata and Kageyama have each had two beers, Tadashi has had a soju, and Yachi an oolong highball. But Tadashi can feel Tsukishima’s eyes on him the whole time.

He tries to ignore it, tries to pretend he doesn’t notice, but he doubts it’s very convincing. He’d never really had the talent for fooling Tsukishima. 

Perhaps inevitably, Hinata and Kageyama end up getting into an argument. This one is over how many races each of them won against each other at Karasuno. It escalates into a physical scuffle when Kageyama says that there is no possible way Hinata could have been the true champion, because his legs are so short, and Hinata tackles him to the floor.

Tadashi’s instincts are still sharp. He jumps up from his seat at about the same time Tsukishima rises from his. He gets to the other side of the table and captures Hinata, hooking his arms under his shoulders and tugging him off of Kageyama, who’s ensnared within seconds by Tsukishima.

In the chaos, Tadashi forgets his oath of voluntary ignorance. His eyes lock with Tsukishima’s by accident over the squabbling forms of Hinata and Kageyama. Tadashi can plainly see the gears working, turning a want into a calculation. 

He’s just begun to think to himself, bitterly, tiredly, that he really does hate that expression—when Tsukishima ducks his eyes, shuts them, and laughs. 

Once they’ve all calmed down, paid the bill, and Kageyama has finished his sixth pee of the evening, they emerge from the restaurant to find themselves under a snow shower. Tsukishima produces a bright green collapsible umbrella from his pocket almost immediately. Yachi has her own and an extra, which she gives to Hinata and Kageyama.

Yachi says she’ll catch a late train back to her mom’s apartment, and Hinata volunteers himself and Kageyama to escort her to the train station on their way back to his house. So gallant, Tadashi thinks, even though Kageyama pouts when he realizes that it will be a little longer before he gets Hinata to himself again. 

“Do you want me to call you a cab, Tadashi?” Yachi asks after she gives him another tiny hug.

“It’s okay,” Tadashi says with a wave of one mittened hand. “I’ll just walk.”

“Me too,” Tsukishima says.

Yachi beams as though she’s just received some unexpected good news even as Tadashi clenches his jaw.

“Your houses are still close to each other, right?” (Tadashi will not believe for an instant that this isn’t information she has on file.) “So you can walk together! It all works out! Thanks, Kei-kun!”

“Haha, yeah,” Tadashi replies with the fakest smile he’s ever had to piece together, painfully aware of Tsukishima standing a few steps to his right, watching him.

 

* * *

 

Tadashi holds out for a while. He really does. When he’s had the time to evaluate his performance, he’ll give himself some credit.

In the moment, though, standing at one end of the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change, he can’t help but feel like he’s caving in when he tightens his fists in his pockets and hoarsely says to the concrete at his feet instead of to Tsukishima’s face:

“You’re a jerk.”

Tsukishima doesn’t visibly react. Out of the corner of his eye, Tadashi can see him holding his umbrella between them, staring impassively out at the street ahead. 

“Why are you even doing this?” Tadashi demands when he receives no response to the first thing. His heavy breaths fog angrily in front of him. 

Tsukishima still doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even look over at him. All that time at the party staring at him like he was going to disappear and now this. Tadashi has to hold back a thin laugh. 

How could he have ever missed this? Would he miss talking to the _ocean_?

“Back then,” he croaks, “when you stopped talking to me—I thought—” He can feel his cheeks heating up, always the first signal that some especially messy tears are building, and he knows that he should leave it alone; he knows he won’t get an answer that satisfies him—he knows better than that—but still— _still_ —

His voice breaks. “Did I do something _wrong_?”

Finally, Tsukishima speaks.

“No.”

That lone response, hardly more than a whisper, is all it takes for the last bastion of Tadashi’s defenses to give way. He remembers how it had felt, that first year, not having Tsukishima there: a phantom pain, a shapeless ache, a writhing, mutating guilt. The countless questions that had accumulated over time rise to the surface all at once before he can push them down again, crowding together in the cold, dark avenue, wounded and afraid.

“Had—” He gulps. “Had you just decided I was too annoying?”

Tsukishima sighs quietly. “No.”

“Did you get cooler friends?”

“No.”

“You got bored of me?”

“No.”

“H-Had you hated me the whole time? Since elementary school? Since junior high?”

“No.”

Tadashi bites his lip, hard. The view of the street is beginning to warp. He’s going to start crying any second now. Damn it.  _Damn it_. 

“You never texted me first,” he stutters, “o-or called me first or came to see me—it was like you just wanted to forget I’d ever existed.”

“Yamaguchi.”

Tadashi winces.

“Was I holding you back?” he finally asks.

His voice cracks halfway through. So uncool.

This is the uncertainty that had dwarfed all the others, the one that had compelled him to reevaluate so many interactions in the middle of the night, as if the formless dreams about kissing and touching and whatever else weren’t enough—

Tsukishima barks out a laugh.

Well, Tadashi guesses it’s meant to be a laugh, but it doesn’t sound like one—it sounds as though it had been punched out of him. It might be the most painful noise Tadashi’s ever heard.

“Were _you_ holding _me_ back,” Tsukishima mutters, like it’s some kind of awful joke.

Tadashi finally, and with great effort, lifts his head to look at him, and then remembers why he hadn’t wanted to. Tsukishima’s profile glows in the blue light from a streetlamp a few feet away. A fragment of an empty smile haunts his face. There are some stray flakes of snow dusting the crown of his head, and his ears are red from the cold.

God. Tadashi wants to kiss them.

“Tsukishima—?” he starts to ask, though he doesn’t know what’s supposed to come after.

The muscle memory of _Tsukki_ is a tough one to restrain. It hurts not to use it, like putting weight on a sprained ankle.

“No,” Tsukishima finally answers. “That wasn’t why.”

He breathes in through his nose, then exhales softly from his mouth.

He says, “It was because I liked you. Sorry.”

The crossing light turns green and Tsukishima steps off of the sidewalk. Unprotected by the umbrella, Tadashi, rooted in place, is promptly showered in flurries of snow, mouth agape.

Tsukishima pauses in the middle of the street and glances expectantly back at him. The moon, fleetingly visible through the passing clouds, glints on the lenses of his glasses.

Tadashi’s brain has scattered into a handful of pieces, but he definitely doesn’t want Tsukishima to get hit by a car, so he gathers his wits and runs after him— _runs_.

“You what?” he practically yells when they’re both safely on the other side. “What? _What_?!”

“People are trying to sleep, Yamaguchi. It’s one in the morning.”

“Tsukki!”

Tsukishima immediately reaches up to adjust his glasses, even though they aren’t slipping or crooked. His gloves are black leather. Tadashi feels even more stupid, now, in his mittens.

“Do you really need me to say it again?” Tsukishima mumbles.

Tadashi is panting. “ _Tsukki_!”

“I liked you,” Tsukishima says, using approximately the same cadence that he would to explain quadratic equations on the floor of Tadashi’s old room. “I’ve liked you this whole time. I still do. A lot.”  

Tadashi’s mind shouts back so many things, each more furious than the last. _Liar_ — _why didn’t you say something_ — _I still do, too_ — _you can’t just get out of being a jerk by saying stuff like that_ — _I_ _’m really going to stay mad at you this time_ — _I’m really going to_ —

“I think about you all the time,” Tsukishima murmurs, hardly audible.

 _I’ll follow you anywhere_.

Tadashi throws out an arm and grabs Tsukishima by the scarf, yanking him forward with one tug.

He kisses his chin first by accident, then finds his mouth. Tsukishima’s breath hitches and his grip on the umbrella tightens; Tadashi can hear the material of his gloves strain at his ear when it does.

Tsukishima makes an impossibly gentle sound. 

Tadashi isn’t cold anymore. 

After a stretch of time, he pulls back an inch or so, half-lidded eyes searching Tsukishima’s face for clues. Tsukishima just gazes back at him, open-mouthed and flushed, spellbound.

“Oh,” Tsukishima says comprehendingly. “Oh.”

“Idiot,” Tadashi tells him.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima breathes with a nod.

“Idiot,” Tadashi repeats more forcefully, fingers tightening in the scarf.

Tsukishima nods again. “Yeah.”

“You paid for the reservation, didn’t you?” Tadashi asks. “Not Hinata.”

Tsukishima snorts, standing up a little straighter. “So what if I did?”

“You wanted to see us.”

“Yeah.”

“You wanted to see _me_.”

“Yeah.” Tsukishima’s expression softens. “I did.”

It’s so much for Tadashi to process, but also, weirdly, it’s all converging, retroactive truths assembling themselves, edge along edge. 

Even after all that...

Tsukishima is still his favorite person in the whole world.

“Do you want to come over?” Tadashi asks.

The question is so familiar and routine that he hardly has to think to put it together.

Tsukishima blinks back at him, eyebrows arching.

“It’s cold,” Tadashi qualifies. His ears are hot and his mouth is dry, a part of it still learning Tsukishima’s taste. “Mom made, um, curry. If you’re hungry.”

Tsukishima slowly lifts his hand to his face, pretending to fix his glasses again.

His eyes and mouth are obscured when he says, “Sure,” but out there, in the crisp December silence of the town where they grew up, Tadashi can hear the smile in his voice without even having to see it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my betas, Sara and Emmy!


End file.
